


Self Portrait

by Neroli66



Category: The Inside
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-25
Updated: 2006-08-25
Packaged: 2019-09-15 11:38:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16932579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neroli66/pseuds/Neroli66
Summary: Danny reflects on his past. This is dark.





	Self Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> Talk about a series that was cancelled before it's time.....rip The inside, thank you for giving us Rachel Nichols
> 
> Trigger warnings in end notes.

Danny drove up to the house with only a nervous knot in his stomach and his own dark memories for company. He was not sure he wanted to do this now that he was here. But he’d been heading back to this house for years now, probably ever since he’d left this crap town.

This wasn’t the house he’d grown up in, that was further up the block and on the other side of the street. No, this was the Rose girls house. He noticed that it was no longer the pristine white it had once--always--been as he parked his rental in front of it.

He wasn’t sure why that shocked him. Or why he’d been shocked when he’d found out that she still lived here.

The house looked more inviting now, with it’s soft green walls and pale yellow shutters. There were rose bushes growing in front of the porch where the small marigold garden used to be.

It was oddly fitting, not that the Rose sisters last name had ever been Rose. But it was the middle name that they had shared, as well as their mothers name.

Crystal had been the oldest, tiny, perfect, pretty Crystal. The girl all the guys wanted to go out with because she never said no. Gwen had told him once, sitting on that very porch, that her sister had never been taught that she _could_ say no. He found himself wondering now where Gwen had learned it.

He should have known--they all should have--what was going on in this house. And maybe they all had but no one had wanted to admit it. That Ron James had loved his daughters just a little too much after his wife died.

Even if they hadn’t known before it should have become clear when Crystal Rose James had swallowed an entire bottle of Drano on her 18th birthday.

But it hadn’t. They had all gone to the funeral and brought over casseroles later and went back to ignoring the little girl that was left. And Gwen had been easy to ignore back then.

No sudden changes occurred in her appearance to trigger any warning signs that she was in trouble after her sister died. But that’s because they had all missed the change she went through when the trouble first started.

A little overweight, quiet as a mouse, hiding behind lank hair, thick glasses and her ever present library books. She was no longer the slightly precocious, friendly little kid who you couldn’t get to shut up. But he knew--better than most--that behind the mouse-like exterior had lurked strength.

That was why he was here now. Somehow, someway, she had found the strength to not only live, but survive, in that house. The house that her sister had died in, her father too. Hell, for all he knew her mother had died in there as well.

And now he needed to find some of that strength for himself.

Because ever since the day he’d heard the soft, sweet voice that sounded so much like Crystal whispering in his ear about how her Daddy had touched her and now she didn’t want to live anymore he hadn’t been able to ignore what the Rose girls had gone through.

Ever since he’d seen the blankness in Angelica’s eyes he hadn’t been able to forget the same emptiness that had been in Crystal’s.

And he needed forgiveness. Not from this, this he was no more--and no less--guilty of than everyone else on the block had been.

He needed it because ever since he’d first seen the look in Rebecca’s eyes when she came face to face with some monster that had ripped a naive child’s innocence away he’d been haunted by the look on Gwen’s face the last time he had seen her.

She had looked up at him as he sat on the stand and calmly told the courtroom he hadn’t seen anything. And that was true as far as it went. He hadn’t gone into the room while Anders and the others were raping her. But he had known what was going on.

It had been _him_ that had brought her to the party. He’d known that his brothers--his fellow Marines--were going to be drinking and in the mood for humiliating a room full of lonely, ugly girls.

He had invited her to come along after she’d called to say she was in San Diego for spring break. It was her first year in college and she‘d started to come out of her shell a little.

He’d been thinking of Crystal when she called, remembering that Crystal had never had a problem being passed around. She had almost seemed to crave it even. Just like all the other girls at all the other dog parties he’d been too. They--like Crystal--had seemed more than happy for every scrap of affection they got. No matter how horrific the motivations of the ones giving it to them had been.

Of course, he understood the psychology behind that now. Sometimes he wished he didn’t, it made what he’d done to Gwen that much worse.

Because Gwen had trusted him.

Unlike the other boys, he had always stopped and sat on the porch and talked to her for a bit before going in to see her older sister. Unlike everyone else, she had tried to tell him what was going on in this house, even if he hadn’t wanted to understand what she meant at the time.

It didn’t help at all that he hadn’t seen what they did to her. He’d known, he’d heard, he’d even been the one that had bundled her up and taken her to the emergency room. He’d sat by her side until the Doctors said she’d make it, but he hadn’t stopped them from hurting her in the first place.

He hadn’t stopped himself from seeing her as some treat to dangle in front of them.

And then he had sat at Anders trial and told everyone that he hadn’t seen anything. He could have told them about the bruises he saw, the black eyes so swollen she couldn’t even open them. The blood trickling from her split lip and from down between her legs.

But you watch your fellow soldiers backs, you don’t turn them in. So he had kept to his story and at the time he thought that was fine. Anders had been found guilty anyway, dishonorably discharged. The others that had gone in after had been reprimanded.

She hadn’t needed him to win her battle. She hadn’t needed him to back her up when she faced her father after she returned here. She hadn’t needed him to say “no” to the bastard.

She hadn’t needed him to survive when the last member of her family had swallowed the barrel of his shotgun rather than face a daughter who had learned that justice is sometimes served.

He’d been telling himself that for over 20 years now. Like it made everything he had done--and hadn’t done--all right.

Danny shook his head slightly to clear it. He’d been standing on her porch too long already, it was a wonder the neighbors hadn’t called the cops on him. But then, this neighborhood had always had a blind spot when it came to this house.

He watched his hand tremble as it reached out to ring the doorbell.  


**Author's Note:**

> Danny is remembering two sisters from his childhood that were raped by their father, one ends up committing suicide, which is mentioned rather abruptly in the fic. The other he takes to a dog party when he is in the military where she is raped by his fellow solders. It is heavily implied her father may have killed the mother and he also took his own life.
> 
> He also regrets lying on the stand to protect his fellow soldier and not stopping them in the first place.


End file.
